The King gifted the guitar to a lucky fan way back in 1979.
Elvis Presley’s most famous guitar just netted a fan £184,000 in an auction after Elvis gave it to him 41 years ago.
Mike Harris from North Carolina, USA, stood in the from row of an Elvis Presley concert back in 1975, only for 'The King' to present him with the guitar when the show finished, advising him to hold onto the instrument because ‘it might be worth something one day’.
And even though the gift just netted him almost £200k, it was actually expected to fetch around £350,000.
We'd still be pretty ecstatic with this result though...
Source: Graceland.com
Harris was 21 years-old at the time and attended the concert with his wife. Speaking of the incredible incident in a 2005 interview with Mountain Xpress he said: ‘He was in his opening number…after he finished the first verse, they went into a break and he stopped, looked straight at me, walked over to the edge of the stage, and said, ‘Here, this is yours.’’
‘Three or four songs later, he calls me back up to the stage, and I’m thinking: ‘I’m going to give it back.’ Elvis said: ''I gave that to you for a reason.’'…I have no clue what the reason was.’
The black 1969 custom Gibson Ebony Dove guitar is Elvis Presley’s most widely recognised guitar and was used in most of his shows between 1971 and 1975 - including his famous ‘Aloha from Hawaii’ concert of 1973 which was watched by an estimated combined live and televised audience of 1 billion people.
The auction took place at the Graceland museum (Elvis' old home) on January 7th and will kick-off a three-day celebration for what would have been Elvis' 80th birthday. Another 126 authenticated artefacts also went on sale including a 1958 handwritten letter Elvis wrote to his friend while he was stationed in Germany during WW2, a golden microphone used by Elvis in 1969, and the reel-to-reel original recording of the Louisiana Hayride show where the famous ‘Elvis has left the building’ phrase was first uttered.
